Ibibio Sound Machine will release their new album Doko Mien tomorrow, and today they are sharing the video for the groovesome, inclusive album single “Wanna Come Down.” Brooklyn Vegan described the track as an “infectious jam from the album that mixes disco, ’80s electro with English and Ibibio language lyrics,” and the video captures the song’s liveliness. Watch the Steve Gullick-directed video here: https://youtu.be/fS52yAAaWhE

“Music is a universal language, but spoken language can help you think about what makes you emotional, what makes you feel certain feelings, what you want to see in the world,” says frontwoman Eno Williams. When she uses both English and Ibibio-the Nigerian language from which her band’s name is derived-on Doko Mien, the group somehow produces a world of both entrancing specificity and comforting universality, a language entirely of their own. In a glowing piece in the New York Times, the songs on the band’s 2017 second album, Uyai, were praised for following “in the tradition of much African music, [making] themselves the conscience of a community.” By pulsing the mystic shapes of Williams’ lines through further inventive, glittering collages of genre on Doko Mien, Ibibio Sound Machine crack apart the horizon separating cultures, between nature and technology, between joy and pain, between tradition and future.

Long lauded for their jubilant, explosive live shows (Entertainment Weekly best described them, saying, “If the United Nations’ General Assembly convened at Studio 54, Ibibio Sound Machine would easily be that night’s headlining act”), the group fully capture that energy and communication on the new album. After a set of recent album-release shows throughout the UK including sold-out shows in London, Bristol, and Manchester, Ibibio Sound Machine just announced new fall UK dates and a rescheduled U.S. tour set for this summer. Stateside shows include an appearance at MRG30 in North Carolina and at Pickathon in Oregon. See their current tour routing below!